Comments on: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn revisited: “I welcome your snowballs”http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/
Cynthia Haven's blog for the written wordWed, 21 Feb 2018 05:24:49 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.5By: Reid Dimperiohttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-28237
Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:28:24 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-28237I love the first pic, beautiful!
]]>By: Cynthia Havenhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-24101
Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:06:29 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-24101Good to hear from you, Ruth! My email is cynthia.haven at stanford.edu.
]]>By: Ruth Atkinshttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-23607
Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:11:31 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-23607Hi, Cynthia-
I was seeking the means to thank you for the Szymborska book, and found this wonderful blog. I read voraciously through the first page , and wanted to comment on the this intriguing correspondence about Solzhenitsyn. After assigning both his Nobel Speech and Lecture to my AP English class, I have gone through many strong opinions about his stance on Western culture. After spending that year in Russia, I was grateful upon returning to have free access to information which I’d had to pay for in RUssia – what time trains departed, etc- but the noise pollution here and the assault on one’s other senses that flies on the coattails of a market economy- gave me cause to question our Adam Smithsonian idea of freedom. It has no inherent moral values, which is why it works, for better or worse.
ANyway, the parallel reading I assigned (all using Orwell’s 1984 as an excuse for the RUssophilia) were Brodsky’s Nobel Speech and Lecture. He addresses some of the issues as to what freedom is for an artist, one of which is autonomy of imagination. the freedom to be ironic and to criticize one’s society. Referring generously to the precedents of Mandelstam, Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva.His idea of ” spiritual” is clearly different from Solzhenitsyn’s, and more intellectual, but it does underlie what Brodsky valued and needed (one never knows what tense to use in this case) in the west: An ability to follow the voice of one’s muse- to listen and speak freely- which though an amoral value, is nonetheless a requirement for the spirit of an artist. (Mais tu sais tout cela, mieux que moi, sans doute).It is still (or again- if you hiccup for Krushchev and Gorbachev) difficult to speak freely in RUssia. MOreover, the worst of the free and black market economies have eroded any claim to spiritual pre-eminence. Solzhenitsyn’s return to Russia reminded me of Tolstoy’s renunciation of his early novels. PS This is more of a hello than a post, please.
]]>By: Elena Danielsonhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-20865
Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:21:23 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-20865The black/white photo shows Solzhenitsyn reading bound Russian newspapers in an office in Hoover Tower. In 1976 he worried about his security would not work in the first floor reading room. Fearful of assassination attempts, the librarian in charge, a sweet Estonian lady named Hilja Kukk, guarded him fiercely. When a burly Russian demanded to be taken to Solzhenitsyn’s office, she refused, trembling in fear. Just then the elevator door opened and out came the great man, saw the burly guy, embraced him with Russian bear hugs and greeted a long lost school chum and confident. Hilja laughed about this many times. Solzhenitsyn found so much documentation at Hoover that he added 300 pages to his book, “August 1914,” and rendered it unreadable. The biographer D. M. Thomas noted: “In a sense, an assassination took place in the Hoover Institute [sic] that spring. An artist died. He became, instead, a kind of obsessional ‘hoarder’: nothing was to be left to the reader’s imagination.” (p. 484) A documentarian, Solzhenitsyn asked his compatriots to write up their experiences. He took those memoirs with him from Vermont to Moscow, where they form the core of a growing body of materials on the Russian experience, the stuff of history that does not show up in government archives, and does not fit neatly between two book covers. Viktor Moskvin, curator of the Solzhenitsyn library in Moscow, continues the documentary obsession with panache.
]]>By: Frances Madesonhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-20219
Sat, 27 Nov 2010 00:47:53 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-20219You know, Mr. Sypeck, I don’t participate in the capital markets anymore. But if I did, and if I were a Conde Naste shareholder, for instance, I would hope that the editor-in-chief of the flagship publication of the corporate person whom I had entrusted with my equity investment, would have some legitimate claim to decency. I do agree you with you on one point: we don’t have to discount, but neither have we to mark up excessively and unjustifiably, any ole way you slice it.
]]>By: Jeff Sypeckhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-20185
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:21:39 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-20185I don’t know much about David Remnick, but the example of Sozhenitsyn applies to him, too, as a reminder that we don’t have to discount everything a writer says just because we think he got a few big things wrong, even if moral judgment is his very subject. Otherwise, we’ll aspire to no higher criticism than a sophisticated version of the ad hominem fallacy, and we’ll struggle to fill library shelves with authors who were infallibly decent and right.
]]>By: Frances Madesonhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-20151
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:09:19 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-20151All of those excellent points are very well taken, Cynthia, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me here: Pulitzer prizes ain’t what they used to be. Anyway, I’m going on my own experience. I saw that dentist’s son from Hackensack moderate a panel of Judith Remnick, Ed Rothstein, and the editor of Philip Roth’s LOA Volume (whose name escapes me just at the moment) on the occasion of its publication a few years ago. I was curious, so in the Q&A I raised my hand, was called on by DR, and I asked, “What exactly does an editor of previously-edited material actually do?”

And you know what that yutz did? In front of a packed auditorium at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, he turned to the panel and said (with the dumbest possible expression on his face, think: My Pet Goat), “That’s a really good question! What DOES an editor of previously-edited material actually do?”

It was like a Shecky Green routine, but he didn’t know it. Hence, yutz (in glorious spades).

]]>By: Cynthia Havenhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-20145
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:35:26 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-20145Remnick is a Pulitzer-prizewinning authority on things Russian, as well as a prominent editor. For that reason, his opinions on Solzhenitsyn carry some weight. I certainly don’t know of anyone else who has made such a strong statement about Solzhenitsyn’s position as a writer.

My other comment addressed Jon Stewart, for his moral blankness about including Cat Stevens in his peace and sanity line-up. Stevens/Islam is welcome to his own opinions, which I expect are no more than another kind of self-protective buckling to conform to those who might ostracize and condemn him. I could just as easily cited America’s tepid support for the Iranian green movement, or our refusal to support Molly Norris or others whose free-speech has earned them a fatwa, or a host of other examples. But this post was already getting long.

All of this, of course, was to illustrate that Solzhenitsyn may not be as far off in his judgments about America’s “decline in courage,” which he says “may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days.” I suspect it’s become more pronounced since his 1976 address.

]]>By: Frances Madesonhttp://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2010/11/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-revisited-i-welcome-your-snowballs/comment-page-1/#comment-20129
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:13:07 +0000http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/?p=10553#comment-20129This one’s all over the map. I’ll just say this…why quote that Monsanto-eating, Iraq War-supporting David Remnick as an “authority” on anything? You have an amazing intellect, Cynthia. I am boundless in my admiration for your skill, taste and judgment. But surely you see how leading this post about moral authority by quoting Remnick furthers the insane meta-static we are “living” in. Cat Stevens, for all of his repulsive demagoguery, is not an nth the enemy to societal well-being as Herr Remnick is.
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